


Scourge

by tempus_teapot (dreadnot)



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Tranquility, kmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-20
Updated: 2012-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadnot/pseuds/tempus_teapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A single scene. The Rite of Tranquility performed on Anders fails and he takes his vengeance on those who performed it. Written in response to a kmeme prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scourge

There is fear.

And there is terror.

And there is something that surpasses mere terror. In the Fade, it would be a demon named Scourge for its power to tear away everything except pain and a soul-consuming dread.

On this side of the Veil, for mages across Thedas, its name is Tranquility.

• • •

Anders gripped the chair arms and barely noticed that the restraint chair’s wood arm rests were gouged from the fingernails of countless other desperate mages clawing for some escape from the inevitable. He wasn’t struggling to free himself when all hope of freedom was already lost. He had been drained, he had been restrained, and now the Rite of Tranquility went on while he struggled only to keep from wailing.

Terror scourged him down to the depths of the soul he shared with Justice, leaving no room for anything else, not even thoughts for what would happen to the spirit when the Rite was completed.

They’d had time to contemplate that particular terror in the hours before he was brought to the hatefully sunny room in the highest tower of the Chantry where the Rite would be performed.

“We do not hide from the Maker’s sight with what we do,” trilled the waif of a mage (traitor) who would perform the mage’s half of the Rite. “We are freeing you from all the things that made you do such evil.”

She watched while the two templars adjusted the chair’s head rest, raising it to cradle the back of his head in a padded depression that held him with ironic care. He hated her for the pure kindness and pity he saw in her expression.

He seized on the hate to hold as a flame against the dark terror when the templars, faceless automatons in their full face helmets, put two straps across his face to hold his head back in its cup. The first lay just under the shelf of his brow, mostly covering his eyes, though he could peek through his lashes to see the lower half of the room. The second strap had a leather bit that he resisted until one of the templars pinched his nose closed and forced him to gasp for a breath. In a moment the bit was between his teeth and it was all he could do to shake his head back and forth in tiny motions of negation.

Not like this. Maker, just kill him, not this.

Even those tiny motions could not be allowed. He felt cold on his cheeks, along the sides of his head, and then he recognized what was happening. His head was being clamped between two metal plates like an egg in a vise.

He could not move, he could not curse them, and the slow hot trickle of tears leaking out from under the leather strap over his eyes quenched the fire of his hatred, leaving him with only despair.

Once he was fully restrained the little mage came forward and kissed his forehead. “It will be better soon. Ser Felicity has agreed to perform the Rite with me. She has a steady hand with the brand and before you know it, all the pain will be gone.”

She dabbed at the tears on his cheeks with the cuff of her robe and left him when the door opened and closed.

He wanted to scream, _“Just kill me!”_ but the bit in his teeth would not allow it. His lips were parched, his tongue was dry, and soon the fear would be gone.

He would be gone.

Justice would be gone.

 _They_ would be gone.

He turned inward to escape the scourging fear and thought that maybe emptiness would be better. Anything was better than this.

He heard the mage’s voice rise in the opening chant of the Rite and felt the magic that permeated every fiber of his being resonate in response to her call. It came awake like a timid cat being coaxed out of hiding under a bed or deep in thick brush.

He felt _alive._

Her voice rose and now another woman’s voice joined in a counterpoint chant that filled the gaps between the mage’s words with something not coaxing but demanding. His entire body went rigid with pain as his magic responded now to the new demands, wrenching itself out of his bones, out of his blood, out of his skin until his body was weeping the crystalline blue of raw magic out of every pore.

He was blinded behind half-closed eyelids by the blue glow of tears lit with magic until the light went out and his body went limp in the restraints.

The brand, when it came, barely jarred him out of the weakness of having every mote of magic stripped from him. His body jerked reflexively at the pain, but his mind, cracked and flayed under the scourge of fear, almost welcomed an end to his terror.

And then there was a kiss of healing magic on his brow and even the pain of the burn was gone.

“There,” murmured the mage, “it’s all better now.”

“You’re always too soft on them, Dahlia,” said the woman Anders assumed was Ser Felicity. He didn’t know her, but he hated her.

He…

He hated her.

He _hated_ her.

He had never been so happy to hate in his entire life.

Even Justice – _Maker, Justice was still with him!_ – did not rebuke him for reveling in hatred. It was too strong, and he brought the spirit along with him into the heat and joy of hate, letting it alloy them into something stronger than the sum of their parts.

They sat in silence, gathering strength from their hate. They made no sound when their hands were released, when the vise was loosened, when the straps were taken off their head. They could still feel the Fade, not the way they had before, but it was still there, rooted in the tendrils of Justice that permeated every aspect of his being.

They blinked mildly up at the templar who released them and rose unsteadily to their feet. They were weak, and their magic had been drained away, but they had recourse.

“May w—” _Not we._ “May I have some water.”

They surveyed the room and made their calculations swiftly before the rising tide of hate burst from their skin in a wash of Fade light that would give them away.

Dahlia smiled and said, “Of course. Let me just—” They snatched the knife off her belt the moment her back was turned, burying it in the side of her neck with one hand while they jerked at the staff on her back with the other hand, ripping it out of its stays before her knees had time to buckle.

Anders’ magic was gone for now, but they braced themselves on the stolen staff and felt its magic bolster them just as they let the last pretense drop and the light of the Fade wash over their skin.

They cannibalized muscle and bone to feed the hate and the magic that grew from it. They shot a hand out in Ser Felicity’s face and froze her in place before they pivoted on their heel to throw out an arc of biting ice at the surprised pair of helmeted templars who had strapped Anders into that chair.

For just an instant the entire room was a frozen tableau before Felicity finished falling to the floor and they were moving again, bringing their staff down on one frozen templar’s right arm, shattering it like glass before he could break out of the ice and draw his sword.

They swung their staff again at the other helmeted templar’s head and felt their lips pull away from a feral snarl of victory when helmet and skull beneath shattered, sending shards of frozen blood and fractured helmet flying in a gratifying explosion of destruction that fed their hate and through their hate, fed their magic.

It all happened in the space of a handful of panted breaths before they slammed a fist of stone into the broken-armed templar and spun to catch Ser Felicity in a cage of gripping magic just as she shook off the ice paralysis and took a step toward them.

Her eyes gleamed with a hate that made theirs surge with mutual recognition.

There could be no peace here. No compromise.

She would die first.

Or they would die first.

They reached through the bars of the magical cage and drew her sword from its scabbard.

 **“Never.”** They dropped the stolen staff and gripped her sword in both hands before they drove it through a gap in her armor and up under her ribs to find her heart.

They watched the blood drain from her face and stepped back as the cage dissipated with no living being to hold, letting her body fall to the floor.

 **“Never again.”**

They turned their face upward and let the clear winter sunlight touch the brand on their forehead. Now they would be the scourge.


End file.
